


Amid the Wreckage

by hellkitty



Category: Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: M/M, Sticky Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-18
Updated: 2012-06-18
Packaged: 2017-11-08 12:08:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/443045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellkitty/pseuds/hellkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Set sometime on Cybertron facing the Swarm during AHM.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Amid the Wreckage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nan00k](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nan00k/gifts).



> Set sometime on Cybertron facing the Swarm during AHM.

**Title:** Amid the Wreckage ****  
 **Continuity:** IDW  
 **Pairing/Characters:** Drift/Perceptor, Ratchet  
 **Rating/Category:** NC-17  
 **Word Count/Format:** 2205  
 **Prompt:** N/A  
 **Spoilers:** I didn’t know if the recipient was keeping up with MTMTE so this is set mid AHM, on Cybertron fighting the Swarm  
 **Notes/Warnings:** sticky, character death (OC)

It stood out over the din of battle. Even over the roar of the Insecticons, the howling, gibbering rabble of their mindless assault, he heard the thunder of the building collapsing: the groan of rebar, the chunking fall of plascrete. It was the sound of death, like the city itself caving in behind him, succumbing to despair.

…Perceptor.

 

Drift hesitated, his blades caught mid swing, as though thunderstruck. An Insecticon leaped to take advantage, its steel mandibles sinking into Drift’s elbow before the other could react.

 

  
Drift snarled, optics flaring almost white, swinging his free blade up, driving the point into the Insecticon’s throat. And once he started moving, the momentum built, and he tore a swath through the Swarm, aiming toward that horrible sound.

 

He hit his comm, frantic, pinging Perceptor’s freq with a haste he knew must seem like panic.

 

Because it was, especially when the pings went unanswered.

 

The building was easy enough to find: he followed the cloud of rising grey dust, filtering the already dim light of the darkened planet. He plunged into the cloud, feeling it clog his vents, film his optics, as he pushed through, swords ringing against chunks of stone and plascrete. “Perceptor!” Stealth didn’t matter. Quiet didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter was finding the sniper.

 

Drift gave a garbled sound, half a growl, half a plea, attacking the fallen rubble with his blades as though it could be, should be, killed. Sparks flew, ringing from the metal and stone, as the plascrete fell away, pulverized.

 

There. A black hand, a flash of teal armor, the fingers curled loosely around the grimed barrel of a rifle.

 

Drift flung himself at the task more earnestly, shoving his blades into their sheaths, clawing at the rubble with hands, feet, anything to move it aside, move it off Perceptor’s frame.

 

The Swarm wouldn’t let it pass, though: they smelled their own on Drift, the rancid odor of their energon and the stink of death. They scrabbled through the thinning cloud, claws skittering over the rubble, stumbling, slowed, but insistent, pouring up at Drift as he unearthed Perceptor’s body.

 

One chittered, rising to its hind legs, towering over Drift, as another clambered up its back, reaching over its shoulders. The mandibles fluttered open, malevolent, dripping, mismatched optics and cumbersome limbs bracing for a strike.

 

Drift whirled, called by some instinct, bringing Perceptor’s rifle to bear. The armor-piercing heavy rounds were meant to travel far and accurate: this close, they punched forceful, neat holes in the Insecticons with such force that the ballistic expansion ruptured chassis.

 

The Swarm had only one, communal instinct, and it decided, after losing twenty there, that it had had enough.

 

[***]

 

“Fix him!” Drift shoved his way into the impromptu triage station Ratchet had set up near the front lines. Perceptor dangled from his arms, the longer limbs almost trailing on the floor. He thrust Perceptor at Ratchet, like a broken doll. “Fix him.”

 

“I’ll get to it,” Ratchet said, nodding off to one side, where…maybe, there was an open MARB. His hands were slick and green-smeared pink, deep in Kickover’s thoracic cavity. He kept his optics downcast. On business, yes, but also avoiding what he didn’t have time to deal with. How many times had mechs brought him friends, lovers, their optics open and trusting making that same plaintive deman: ‘fix him’. Fix, as though Ratchet could cure anything. As though all that was needed was the desire to heal and the will.

 

If that was all it took, Ratchet would never lose a patient.

 

He was losing Kickover, right now. And all the will and concentration in the universe wouldn’t change that.

 

“Him,” Drift corrected, his voice on the razor’s edge of danger. “Now.”

 

“Drift,” Ratchet said, impatient, looking up from the body he could feel slipping away, the spark he could feel pulsing ever more dimly with each passing klik. And he saw Perceptor: the red armor scraped down to bare metal, dented, the helm shattered along one side, one hand crushed into a broad, ugly mass. It was impossible to forget that Drift had been a Decepticon: his face curled into some primal, expression of fear and helpless anger.

 

It was why Ratchet tried never to look: it was hard to look away, hard to concentrate when someone looks at you, open and raw and vulnerable, trying desperately to cling to the hope he’s sunk into you like a piton.

 

“All right.” Kickover was a lost cause anyway, beyond even pain. Ratchet sighed. One of the lessons the war had drilled into him, with pneumatic force, was ‘mind the living’. It was the core of triage. “Over there.”

 

Drift nodded, moving to lay Perceptor on the open MARB slab. Ratchet sluiced disinfectant over his hands, trying not to notice the gentle way Drift set him down, stretched out the limbs, the worried way he tried to wipe off some of the grime. Frag. He couldn’t work like this. Not with Drift…there.

 

“I can handle it from here,” he said, gruffly, shouldering Drift out of the way. It was brusque, maybe rude, but the trembling softness left Drift’s face, replaced by a stolid resolve. That? Ratchet could deal with.

 

Drift nodded, stepping back, hands already on his sword hilts. He stopped at the door, and Ratchet didn’t need to turn to know the hardness had already fallen. He could hear it in Drift’s voice. “Do…everything you can,” Drift said, and Ratchet knew the mech was trying, understanding, somehow, what it was like to lose.

 

“I always do,” he said, but the retort lacked any real sharpness, heavy with truth.

 

[***]

 

Drift was gone for three days. Three days of solid fighting, the swordsmech only popping up on commnet to find the next pocket of Swarm, then dropping silent. No one had seen him at a resupply depot—one of the advantages, Perceptor thought, of swords—no one had heard a cry for help. Only those quiet, quick bursts on commnet.

 

And Perceptor had been listening.

 

Ratchet had worked most of a night on him, wordlessly, face set grimly, harshly lit in the shaded lithium light of the triage cube. And Perceptor had pushed himself to heal, routing everything he could to systems in need, shutting down receptors in areas where Ratchet was working.

 

On the first day, he’d had nothing to do but listen and Ratchet had noted, perhaps, that it was slowly fraying at him, because on the second day, Ratchet appeared at his berth, gruffly ordering him to assist him. Menial tasks—changing fluids, checking levels, pushing energon—but they were things needing to be done and Perceptor had been beyond grateful for the distraction.

 

The third day, he’d done more: taking the cases as they came in, his demeanor seeming to calm them as he ranked their injuries, dispensed sensor blocks and energon, fixed some minor damages.

 

“Hmmph,” Ratchet had muttered, crossing behind him at one point. “We need you here, see?”

 

Perceptor had simply nodded. The war needed everyone. But he was better out there, with his rifle, than here, fixing circuits, popping dents, bolting on armor.

 

It was well into the fourth day when Drift finally reappeared, wobbling in the frame of the triage cube’s doorway. He was covered in gore—all the garish colors of the Swarm, like some abstract painting, mixed with char. His armor was scraped, bent, and the plates on his calves and shoulders punctured with the triangular wounds of Insecticon teeth.

 

Yet, he managed a smile when he saw Perceptor, who’d sat up from the berth he’d been napping on. A smile, and an exhausted, “Hey.”

 

He took a step into the cube, but stumbled, weight swinging down to the gridded flooring, barely caught by Perceptor, who lifted him, shifting his weight gently to the ground. “Where are you injured?” Perceptor’s optics scanned, frantically, in the dark, his hands groping for signs of some more grievous injury.

 

Drift shook his head, faintly. “’M all right. Just scrapes. Just…underfueled.”

 

And now that he’d said it, Perceptor could feel it, the subtle tremor in Drift’s charge-starved limbs. He tore himself away, reaching for Ratchet’s supply of fuel for the patients—diluted but with additives. He pressed the pouch into Drift’s hand. “Drink.”

 

Another faint smile, the optics flickering briefly. “You didn’t say ‘you idiot’.”

 

“I was thinking it,” Perceptor said, air chuffing out of his vents in relief. If Drift was well enough to joke, even weakly, he was…well.

 

Drift’s optics shuttered as he sipped at the energon packet. Perceptor could practically feel the fuel rush through him, tingling through exhausted circuits, building and spilling through the capacitors. It was a strangely luxurious feeling, a bare, stripped down gratitude to be alive.

 

Drift finally looked up, giving a relieved, contented sigh. “You look…better.”

 

“Ratchet,” Perceptor said. He hesitated, then seated himself before Drift, tucking his long legs under him, just allowing himself to drink in what three days’ absence had made even more precious. “And you look….”

 

A chuckle. “I can guess.”

 

An awkward moment: Drift turned back to his ration, and Perceptor tugged a rag from his storage, to wipe a clotted stain from Drift’s cheek.

 

Drift dropped the ration, the plastic pouch plopping against his splotched thigh, hand coming up behind Perceptor’s helm, tugging him in for a kiss.

 

They always did this better than words, anyway, Perceptor thought, letting himself be pulled forward, one palm resting on the ground between Drift’s knees for a moment, before pushing forward, as Drift shifted his weight, so that they lay outstretched on the cold ground. Drift’s body was gritty and filthy, and still shaking from the low-fuel, but he was here, and alive, and that was as much as Perceptor could ask for.

 

Drift clutched his arms over Perceptor’s chassis, pushing into the kiss, thighs wrapping around Perceptor’s hips. Perceptor felt the other mech’s pelvic frame twist and grind against his: he could feel the staticky heat of suppressed desire. He pulled back from the kiss, just enough to see the importuning offer echoed in Drift’s optics.

 

Perceptor stifled a soft moan, reaching between their bodies, feeling Drift curve under his touch as he released their interface hatches. Drift whimpered into the kiss, tipping his interface equipment up, inviting, wanting.

 

Perceptor couldn’t refuse. He nosed his spike gently into Drift, feeling the cool surface stretch and cling to him. Drift sighed, hands trembling on Perceptor’s shoulders, optics lidding. He was…beautiful, even dented, stained, damaged. He was everything Perceptor wasn’t—fierce and reckless and intense and entirely at home in the thick of combat. And so, here, entirely given to the moment. To Perceptor.

 

It was a treasure and an honor, and Perceptor determined to make it last, moving slowly against Drift, letting the charge mount slowly, caressing as much of Drift as he could reach—helm, arms, hips, thighs. The dirt didn’t matter. The dents didn’t matter. All that mattered was that underneath…was Drift. The mech who had come for him, saved him.

 

Twice now.

 

He had no idea what Drift saw in him, what worthiness he could possibly have. But he knew, with the knowledge of the body, that Drift wanted him. And he was determined to be worthy, or at least try his utmost.

 

Drift moaned, burying his face in Perceptor’s throat, muffling a soft moan. The valve fluttered against Perceptor’s spike, the white body arching slowly under his, the overload sweeping through them not with the hard force of collision, but a gentle surge, like riding on the back of a thousand trembling wings.

 

Drift lifted his mouth from Perceptor’s throat, one hand stroking gently over the black helm, mouth struggling between emotion and words.

 

The lights flicked on, a blinding white wash.

 

“Drift,” Ratchet said, hands on hips, standing in the doorway. “Could you be any more disruptive to my Medibay?”

 

The quivering mouth resolved itself into a smile, fighting laughter. “I could try harder?” he offered, tipping his head up, optics rolling toward Ratchet.

 

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Ratchet said, dourly, gesturing with his chin for Perceptor to get up. Perceptor eased himself—hastily—from Drift’s valve, giving a regretting whimper as his spike slid free. “Get him on a berth; he looks like he fought his way out of the Swarm’s gullet.”

 

“Not far from the truth,” Drift said, pushing himself slowly to his elbows, letting his optics skim over Perceptor’s long legs as the other stood.

 

“Hmmph,” Ratchet grunted. “Fraggin’ combat. Think we got nothing better to do than patch your stupid afts up.”

 

Drift rose to one knee, still undercharged, but showing it less. “Ratchet,” he said, all humor leached from his voice. “Thank you. Honestly.”

 

Ratchet shrugged. “You want to thank me, get your aft on that berth and let Perceptor get to doing his job—his appointed job. I’ll be watching your hands, Perceptor.”

 

“Yes, Ratchet,” Perceptor said, meekly, wiping the discarded rag down his thighs, one hand closing his interface hatch.

 

“Damn straight ‘Yes Ratchet’,” Ratchet said, turning his face away so that neither of them could see him fighting his own smile. Sometimes, it helped to know you had healed something.


End file.
